Carfraemill wedding brochure design

Thursday 10 March 2016

Carfraemill is a family-run hotel nestled at the foot of the Lammermuir Hills
in Lauderdale. It is set in a stunning location, conveniently placed between
the hustle and bustle of Edinburgh and the rural towns of the Scottish Borders.

The brief from Ruth was to create a visually inspiring brochure which would
encourage brides and grooms to visit the venue. The brochure needed to work
equally well in both PDF and printed format, complement the clean style of
their web site, and feature lots of the lovely images they have recently
commissioned. And with the wedding planning season in full swing they needed
something as soon as possible to respond to an increasing number of enquiries.
Printed copies of the brochure would be produced in small batches to allow for
the images to be updated as appropriate.

Choosing a venue is a key part of planning a wedding, as well as being one
of the highest value decisions that the bride and groom will make. So I felt
it was important to reflect this in the production values of the brochure as
well as in the design. With this in mind I began planning the project from the
end, and worked backwards.

The brochure would be posted as well as being viewed as a PDF. For posting
purposes choosing a size which would fit through letterboxes without being
damaged, and which would work with Royal Mail pricing was important. For the
PDF (which was to be identical to the printed version) keeping the page size
down would make the same sized type appear relatively larger on the page.
This was important as it should help reduce the need to zoom in and out to
read it – even when displayed as spreads. Using A5 met all these requirements,
as well as being a standard paper size, which reduces the amount of waste from
each printed sheet.

The next step was to find a printer who could print the brochure. With
short print runs planned it was almost certain that the best way to print
the project would be on a digital press. However, digital printing technology
is massively varied, and the quality of the print and ability to reproduce
colour well were important deciding factors. This brochure was going to have
large images in it but, just as critical, the client’s corporate colour is
orange. Orange is a notoriously difficult colour to reproduce accurately, so
we needed to find a printer who could cope with that. I decided to focus my
search on printers running HP Indigo presses based on previous experience. For
more information about digital printing read my
interview with Matt Taylor at Colour Options.

With a printer identified I was able to choose a paper from the range which
was suitable for their press. Several paper merchants produce papers which are
HP Indigo compatible, or which can be treated with a special sapphire coating
to make them receptive to the digital inks. This focused down the search. From
the papers available I knew I was looking for something with a soft white
colour so it would complement the orange in Carfraemill’s identity. But thinking
back to those production values I also wanted something with some texture,
which would make the brochure pleasingly tactile to touch. With lots of images
in the design it was also important that the paper was opaque enough to negate
the risk of any show through, which would really spoil the end result. The paper
I chose was Old Mill from Fedrigoni, which ticked all the boxes.

The usual binding technique for a 16pp brochure would be a simple wire
stitch – or staple. I felt this would be missing out on an opportunity to use
the binding to further enhance the finish, and to help this brochure to stand
out from any others that brides and grooms might also receive. Centre sewing
was ideally suited to this project and is becoming increasingly popular. This
is where the pages are sewn together along the fold with a run of small
stitches. It allows the brochure to be opened flat, and with the stitching
in orange to make a real feature of it, it would be the perfect finishing
touch. I have been lucky enough to work with Hipwell Bookbinders on projects
in the past, and so I knew that they would work their magic on this project
too.

Designing this brochure was a pleasure. Ruth was able to supply copy and a
huge range of lovely images to choose from. With the web site in place, the
visual style was already established, but translating that to print, and
presenting the information and images in a way which was interesting and
impactful was great fun.